


To The Losers

by KlingonEtiquette



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Coming Out, Cute, Eddie is also fine, Fix-It, Fluff, Interviews, Mentions of Suicide Attempt, Multi, Richie Tozier is a Dork, Stanley Uris Has OCD - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but it's super subtle, coming out on live tv no less because it's richie, his wife found him and he's fine, stan is fine, suicide attempt—mentioned only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 17:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20916008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KlingonEtiquette/pseuds/KlingonEtiquette
Summary: A few months after defeating Pennywise, Richie starts writing his own material and decides to come out during an interview on live TV. And, of course, the Losers' Club watches from Bill's living room.Everyone lives. I'm not a monster.





	To The Losers

At 9:30 p.m., the Losers’ Club gathered in Bill’s living room. Beverly sat at the far end of the sofa, squeezed in between the arm and Ben with her knees pulled up to her chest, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Next to Ben, Mike was lost in Bill’s latest book, the one with the (frankly terrifying) clown on the cover and a halfway decent ending. Bill sat on his other side, nursing a glass of wine with a worried crease between his eyebrows. Stan perched on the arm of the couch next to Bill, checking his watch despite the fact that Bill’s living room already had a clock.

At 9:55 p.m., Stan stood up and grabbed the TV remote from the coffee table. “In case it starts early,” he explained, though he didn’t need to.

“Thanks, Stan,” Mike said. Stan shrugged and turned on the TV, moving through channels in the blink of an eye.

Without meaning to, Beverly caught herself looking at the scars hidden under Stan’s sleeves. They weren’t all that noticeable, really, and Beverly thought she might not even see them if she didn’t know what to look for. But they were there nonetheless, a grim reminder of what could have happened. She shivered, remembering how heartbroken Stan’s wife had sounded over the phone, sobbing as she waited for someone, anyone to tell her whether Stan would make it. Beverly regretted that she’d had to hang up before the doctors came back with good news. She regretted a lot of things about that day.

“You all right?” Ben asked, his breath warm on Beverly’s cheek. She nodded.

“Yeah.” Her voice broke a little. “Yeah, I’m just… I guess I’m a little nervous.”

“He’s got this. There’s nothing in the world our Trashmouth can’t face, right guys?”

The others nodded and laughed. Bill raised his glass. “I’ll drink to th-that. Anyone else?”

Stan picked up his wine glass, nearly forgotten with the rest of them on the coffee table. His was the only glass on a coaster. To tell the truth, Beverly wasn’t sure Bill owned more than one coaster, since no one ever used them but Stan.

“Guys, it’s on,” Mike shushed.

The first thing Beverly noticed was how put-together Richie looked. He always dressed nicely for interviews, but Beverly had never seen him look so confident, so effortlessly comfortable in his own skin as he looked now. When he shook the interviewer’s hand, he did it with a genuine smile.

_“Thanks for coming, Mr. Tozier,” _the interviewer said. _“Recently you caused quite a stir by saying you were, quote, ‘Writing your own shit now.’”_

Bill snorted. “Beep beep, R-richie.”

_“Uh…”_ Richie rubbed the bridge of his nose, fighting off a smile already. _“Yeah, I did say that. It was… It was a long week. A couple months ago, I got a call from an old friend and a bunch of us got together in our old hometown and it got pretty fucking intense. One of us didn’t even make it over. We, uh, called his wife after dinner and she told us he was in the hospital in critical condition, so that fucking sucked. He’s fine, though. He pulled through. But we didn’t know that until after the whole fucking mess was over.”_

_“Right. Is it all right if I ask what you were doing?”_

Richie shrugged and adjusted his glasses. _“Yeah, yeah, sure. We were taking down a psychotic clown from outer-space. Facing our childhood fears, I guess you’d say. Nothing like running around in the sewers with a bunch of assholes you haven’t seen in twenty-seven years, right?”_

The interviewer took a sip of water. _“You spent a few weeks in the hospital after that, didn’t you, Mr. Tozier? Can you talk about what happened to you there? Everyone’s been so worried about you on Twitter, I can tell you.”_

_“Oh, I was fine,” _Richie said. He seemed a little uncomfortable now, his eyes darting sideways every few seconds. _“Nothing happened to me. Someone… someone I care about did a stupid thing and saved my dumb ass from getting fucking murdered. Got skewered in the process. And I don’t mean skewered as in a little stab. I mean actually skewered.”_

_“But everyone’s all right now?”_

_“Absolutely. Right as rain.”_

_“Before we started, you actually said you had something you wanted to talk about.”_

Beverly saw Bill holding on to Mike’s elbow anxiously. “Here g-goes.”

For a moment, Richie looked like he might break, running his hands through his hair, tugging at his sleeves, pushing his glasses up and down his nose. Beverly’s heart pounded; her palms felt hot and sweaty.

And then Richie took a deep breath, nodded resolutely, and said, _“I did say that. It actually… It ties in to the whole writing my own material thing. When I was a kid, I was part of this group called the Losers’ Club. We were a bunch of fucking losers, you know, but we had each other’s backs and that was the important bit. _

_“Anyway, we grew up in this absolute hellhole of a town where being different pretty much put a big old target on your back. So we were all the outcasts. One of us stuttered, one of us wasn’t allowed to do P.E. because his mom would have a heart attack if he got, like, a papercut. You know… losers.”_

The interviewer laughed quietly, which seemed to encourage Richie.

_“It was middle school, too. So we were at that age where you start getting interested in girls and, like, _dating_girls. Even back then, that was my shtick. I was the girl-crazy, mind-in-the-gutter kind of middle school boy. You know, ‘cause that’s the age where we all started getting interested in girls romantic-styles.”_ He paused for emphasis. _“Except I didn’t.”_

The interviewer looked startled, maybe a little confused, before he said, “You didn’t.” It was one of those statements that should have been a question but didn’t quite come out that way.

Richie gave a thumbs up and a halfhearted laugh. _“Nope. Not even a little. And, listen, I knew what that meant. I wasn’t stupid. I knew I was gay; I was just scared to own up to it in a shithole town like Derry. But if there’s anything going back there taught me, it’s that I can’t spend the rest of my life afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was a kid. I’m almost forty fucking years old, man. I’ve got to start living a little, right?”_

The interviewer clapped. So did the live audience. As if waking up from a dream, Richie took in the noise with a small, contented smile. The camera drew closer and Beverly saw tears forming in Richie’s eyes, just barely there.

_“Living a little… Does that mean you have someone special you want to tell us about?”_

That was it for Richie. His composure slipped and he laughed, the first real laugh of the evening. He laughed until he cried, until Beverly was sure his sides must be hurting, until even the audience had laughed themselves tired.

_“Remember the guy who got skewered?”_

The interviewer nodded.

_“Yeah, I’m seeing his mom.” _Richie laughed harder, a high-pitched, delighted giggle that warmed Beverly’s heart. _“Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m… Honestly, I don’t know where to start, because I _am_ seeing someone. For real. And it’s not like my other relationships, because I never really cared if or when those ended. No, that makes me sound like a dick. I didn’t _not_ care about my girlfriends. I loved them as people, as friends, but not… not like that. Not like girlfriends, if you know what mean.” _

Beverly saw Bill lean in and whisper in Mike’s ear, then Stan’s. Stan cracked a smile. Louder, so the rest of the group could hear, he said, “Classic Richie.”

Mike clapped his hands together, laughing. “Classic Richie,” he agreed. “Didn’t he call to tell you he wasn’t going to bring up the ex-girlfriends?”

Still smiling a little, Stan gave a curt nod. “That’s how I knew he was _definitely_ going to bring it up.”

On the TV screen, Richie adjusted his glasses, cheeks turning pink. He ducked his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache he couldn’t shake. _“This is different because I’m not going in knowing exactly how it ends—you know, an inevitable breakup due to incompatible sexualities. This is someone I could be with for the rest of my life. I _want_ to be with him for the rest of my life. And I don’t want to fuck it up.”_

Next to Beverly, Ben gave a happy little sigh. “That’s sweet,” he said.

“Hopeless romantic,” Beverly teased, leaning close to his ear. He turned and kissed her cheek.

“You love it.”

“I do. I love _you_.”

Beverly could almost hear Stan rolling his eyes. “Beep beep, Benverly,” he said, but a smile threatened to break through his stony expression. Mike reached out and pulled on the back of Stan’s shirt, sending him crashing into Bill, who caught him clumsily. Stan accepted a kiss on the cheek before saying, “You’re getting married in a month, asshole.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually it was quiet enough to hear the TV again. They watched Richie adjust his glasses a second time, push them up and down his nose, clean them, put them back on, and run his hands through his hair.

_“I’ve got an idea,” _he said, snapping his fingers abruptly. _“Let’s get real drunk. I’ll tell you his name no problem.”_

The interviewer laughed and clapped Richie on the shoulder. _“You know, that’s not a bad idea!”_

_“Never is.” _Richie adjusted his glasses one final time, cleared his throat, and said, _“Eddie. His name’s Eddie, he refuses to recognize ‘spaghettus’ as the singular form of ‘spaghetti,’ he’s a total health nut, and he’s the reason I wake up every morning.”_

The live audience gave a collective _awwwww_ and Richie shook his head.

_“You think I’m being cute, huh? No, he is _literally_ the reason I wake up in the morning. I can sleep through an alarm, no problem, but there’s no way I’m sleeping through Eddie’s four separate alarms. No, no, I mean it! He’s got four goddamn alarms and they’re all so fucking loud! But he almost died in my arms, so it’s not like I can be mad at him for wanting to get the most out of every day. I do, too. I spent most of my life scared of what would happen to me if I let myself fall in love. _

_“And, listen, I was in love with Eds when we were kids, too. It wasn’t like we met up again after twenty-seven years and I fell for him then. I was in love with him the whole goddamn time. And I lost him once. For twenty-seven years, I lost him and I didn’t even know it. So when he almost died, I just thought, ‘I can’t lose him again. No way.’ And I made a move.”_

The audience _awwww_-ed again and this time Richie let them, blushing hard.

_“That’s quite a story.” _The interviewer sounded impressed, almost awestruck. _“And now you write your own material?”_

_“Hell yeah, I write my own material!” _Richie paused for the wave of applause that swept through the audience. Despite the distance, Beverly wanted to clap with them. But then Richie checked his watch, leaned over to say something privately to the interviewer, and then turned back to the camera. _“Time’s up, so I’ll make this a short recap. My name’s Richie Tozier, I’m gay as fuck, I’m in love, I’m happy for the first time in a fucking lifetime, and I’m writing my own material. Stanley, I know you’re watching this and it’s way past your bedtime. Go get some sleep, all right?”_

The interview ended on that. Frowning, Stan switched off the TV. “Past my bedtime. I’m a grown up. I don’t need a bedtime.”

Beverly glanced at the clock. “Really?”

“Let him have this,” Ben whispered. “You know how cranky he gets at night.”

“Hey!” Stan snapped. “I heard that.”

Beverly tried not to laugh. “Sorry.”

Stan’s demeanor softened. “Besides, my bedtime isn’t the point. I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m proud of Richie.”

“So proud,” Beverly agreed.

“He did a brave thing,” Mike said.

Bill put his hand on Mike’s elbow. “It’s a big s-step for Richie. Eddie, too.”

A warm arm wrapped around Beverly’s shoulders. Ben’s arm. He pressed a kiss into her hair. It was impossible not to notice his infectious joy as he raised his glass. “To Richie and Eddie,” he said.

“To Richie and Eddie!” Beverly echoed, retrieving her glass from the coffee table. The rest of the Losers followed suit.

There would be time when Richie and Eddie got back to make this toast again, but five was more than enough for a toast.

“To Richie and Eddie!”

Beverly’s phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a text from Richie.

** _Hey, Losers. You’re making some sappy-ass toast right now, right? Eddie and I think you should add this: To the Losers. _ **

No one wanted to argue with that.


End file.
